


Odysseus After All

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Introspection, M/M, Odyssey and Iliad mentions, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-28 22:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: Odysseus, he tells Eleanor, he wants to be like Odysseus. To walk away from the sea and find some peace. His reason for all of this.It’s only later that he realizes that he feels closer to the rage of Achilles.





	Odysseus After All

O Goddess sing what woe the discontent  
Of Thetis' son brought to the Greeks; what souls  
Of heroes down to Erebus it sent...

-Thomas Hobbes' translation of Homer's  _Iliad_

* * *

 

Odysseus, he tells Eleanor, he wants to be like Odysseus. To walk away from the sea and find some peace. His reason for all of this.

It’s only later that he realizes that he feels closer to the rage of Achilles.

It would have been closer to the truth to tell Eleanor that what he really wants is revenge, even if he will not share Thomas with her. Flint closes his eyes and remembers Thomas reading Homer to him, telling him how in love with Patroclus Achilles had been. James’ shock at this, scandalous as Thomas always is, Thomas’ soft laughter as he convinced James of the truth in his words.

Flint remembers thinking, even then, _I’d destroy a city in retribution for you_. He understood Achilles, even then.     

He might be able to escape the sea if he tried hard enough but there is no where he could go where he could go where he would forget all that he had lost. There is no peace left for him. Just a fool’s hope for peace that he knows will not be granted to him. Thomas is gone, he reminds himself every time he wakes and hopes for a wild minute that he’ll roll over and find the other man beside him and a thousand other times throughout the day.

A twinge of guilt, always, that Miranda isn't enough. That no matter how often he returns to her he cannot forget his grief and his need to avenge his lost love. Miranda sees, he knows, and it eats at him.

It torments him, the thought of Thomas, his Thomas, in an unmarked grave. Or buried in unconsecrated ground. Or--or whatever Alfred Hamilton had seen fit to do to his son in death. And Flint can’t imagine that he would be more merciful to him than he was in life, if he even bothered to care about how his son’s body was cared for.

"If any man deserved heaven," Flint had sobbed drunkenly, at some point, when the news had come, "it was Thomas." _Best of men_.  

Mingle our ashes he wants to say, when I die mingle our ashes. So I can be with him again. He almost asks Miranda, or Gates, or Billy. Feels his lips forming the words and has to force himself to stifle them. _Not yet_ , always, _not yet_. Achilles had the right idea, he thinks, and does not say. _I could not save him in life_ , _and maybe I don’t deserve it because I didn’t save him, but I long to be with him in death._

After he’s killed Alfred _,_ he realizes he should have asked. Should have made the man tell him what had become of Thomas. _Would I have let them take his body from me,_ he wonders, _if I had been there?_

And then he almost asks Peter, to grant him that, one last wish. _Mingle our ashes, give me this_. Despite his...rage at this man, despite his hand in Thomas’ death. Peter owes him this, owes them both this at least.

But he won't die yet, so it doesn’t matter. _Not yet_ , he pleads with whoever, whatever, cares enough to listen to his silent prayers, _a little more. I’m not finished yet. For Thomas._

And then Miranda is gone too. Taken by that same man who’s taken, helped to take, _everything_ from him.

There’s no longer anything holding him back. One beating thought, over and over, after him and Vane have destroyed the city and avenged Miranda. After he’d killed Peter, for all of them. _For Thomas for Thomas for Thomas._ It’s all he has left to live for. He has no one to go back to.

He wants to finish Thomas’ vision, or bring it into being by any means. But--he wonders, darkly, what he has to do to die. So many things would have killed anyone else and it would have been...a relief. To be reunited with Thomas somehow and somewhere even if the world would say that they didn’t deserve it. _No shame,_ he reminds himself, _no shame_. So he pushes himself to keep fighting.

_Soon_ , _love_ , he murmurs to the stars, hoping that Thomas can hear and know, _I’ll be with you soon._

And then--he can’t fight anymore. So he stops, let’s Silver’s men take him. Hoping, if this is it, that they won’t draw it out. He’s so tired; he just wants to see Thomas again.

They don’t seem to have any intention of killing him, though, at least not yet. He’s led into the fields. He barely notices them removing the irons around his wrists. Something in his soul is stirring back to life before he can see the man’s face, the man across the field. His gaze is drawn to that man like a string tugging his vision and holding it there. Curses himself for a fool when he sees the man turn, wondering why he never thought to question the news of his death and _Thomas_ is there. And whole and vital and alive.

Flint isn’t quite sure how he convinces his legs to propel him, but for his overwhelming need to touch this man. To assure himself that he isn’t a ghost. Thomas, _Thomas_ , is tugging him closer, and Flint can’t get close enough.

_Odysseus,_ he thinks, and murmurs into Thomas’ skin, drunk on him and his presence and the return of his kisses, though he’s sure that Thomas does not fully understand. Maybe he’ll explain, later. They have time now. Peace is here, in this man’s arms. Later, later he’ll think about getting them both out of there; rage still there, but on the periphery, now, not overpowering all else. The rage is lessened at last; later, he’ll be angry that they have kept Thomas locked and imprisoned for all this time, though this place seems to want to pretend it is not a prison. He will take them away from it all, find someplace for them to live together, far away from the sea. _Odysseus after all._

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading the Song of Achilles and it made me sad and then I thought and James and Thomas. The quote from the Iliad at the beginning is from 1677 or around there which I used mostly cause it could have feasibly been a translation that Thomas had, or at least I can pretend that it would have been. Thanks for reading!


End file.
